A standing portrait statue of Cecil Rhodes, who had been a student at Oriel College, and left £100,000 (about £12.5m in today's money), to the College in his will. The enlarged letters of the inscription are a complicated chronogram of the date of construction (1911). Rhodes was one of the most powerful men in the British Empire in the late nineteenth century. He made his fortune mining diamonds in South Africa, founding the De Beers diamond firm which until recently controlled the global trade. He also entered Cape politics as an MP in 1881 and was Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to1896. Rhodes was a controversial figure in his lifetime, and the controversy surrounding him has continued over a century after his death. He was a staunch imperialist, playing a dominant role in Southern Africa and annexing large areas of land for the British Empire.